Google has finally launched Music Beta, a cloud service that stores your music and lets you stream it to any browser or Android-based device. It's invite-only for now, but the beta version is free. It's not without its limitations, but we think it will certainly become a viable competitor against Amazon's recently released Cloud Player. Here, we present a chart that compares the two services.

Music Beta

Amazon Cloud Player

Storage capacity

20,000 songs

Anywhere from 5GB to 1TB (that works out to around 740 to 152,000 songs, assuming each song is around 4 minutes long recorded at 255Kbps)

Cost

Free and invitation-only for now.

5GB storage for free; $20/year for 20GB, and $1,000 a year for 1TB. Songs bought on Amazon don't count against the limit.

Offline options

Recently played songs are automatically cached for offline listening on Android devices. You can also manually select songs/albums for offline listening. But you can't download songs to a different computer.

You can download the songs to a different computer/device without restrictions. Amazon Cloud Player also uses caching to optimize streaming on Android.

Free music

Google provides some free samples during initial setup

None

Store

None

Yes; songs cost $0.69 to $1.29 and albums are $7 on average. There are often $3.99 album deals as well.

Mobile

Android app; playable on iOS via the browser

Android app; playable on iOS via the browser

Requirements

Google account. U.S. only for now.

Amazon account. U.S. only for now.

Other features

Custom playlists that can be synced with the cloud, intelligent mix

Amazon's Cloud service extends beyond just music.

Sorting

New & Recent, Songs, Artists, Albums, Genres, Time, Song Title, Plays, and Rating.

About the author

Nicole Lee is a senior associate editor for CNET, covering cell phones, Bluetooth headsets, and all things mobile. She's also a fan of comic books, video games, and of course, shiny gadgets.
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